38-story tower proposed at Second and Stewart
By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times business reporter
Developers have approached Seattle city planners about building a 38-story tower downtown at Second Avenue and Stewart Street.
The lower floors of the 440-foot tower would be a hotel and the top 27 floors would have 367 apartments or condos, according to a thumbnail description submitted to the Department of Planning and Development.
The project also would have five levels of underground parking.
No permit applications have been filed yet, a department spokesman said, so no additional details are available. Contacts listed for the project did not return calls seeking more information.
The two-story, retail-and-office MJA Building has stood on the site since 1914. Iowa-based insurance and financial-services giant Principal Financial Group bought it and the neighboring, 10-story Broadacres Building from Seattle's Alhadeff family in 2007.
It's not clear whether the Broadacres site is included in the tower proposal.
KG Investment Management of Bellevue manages both buildings for Principal.
KG's development director is listed by the city as the contact for the tower project, along with an architect at Seattle firm Weber Thompson.
A 2007 city survey of older downtown buildings concluded the MJA Building was eligible for designation as a historic landmark. But the building's terra-cotta cladding, a feature highlighted in the survey, has since been removed.
The survey also concluded the Broadacres Building at Second Avenue and Pine Street — whose ground floor until recently was a Nordstrom Rack — doesn't qualify for landmark designation.
The blocks around Second and Stewart have become a hub of high-rise development in recent years. A block to the south is Fifteen Twenty-One Second Avenue, a 38-story luxury condo tower completed in 2008.
Viktoria Apartments, a 24-story tower, is under construction on Second Avenue one block to the north.
The parking lot directly across Second Avenue from the MJA and Broadacres buildings was the site of the ill-fated 1 Hotel & Residences, a proposed 23-story luxury tower that was among the recession's early casualties.
Equity Residential of Chicago, one of the region's busiest apartment developers, bought the half-block property last week for $22 million, according to county records. An Equity spokesman did not respond to an email asking about the company's plans.
Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com
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